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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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PRESENTATION OF STATUES OF JOHN WINTHROP 
AND SAMUEL ADAMS. 



SPEECH 



HON. GEORGE F. HOAE, 



OF MASSACHUSETTS, 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 



December 19, 1876, 







WASHINGTON. 

1876. 



fv 



SPEECH 

OF 

H X . GEORGE F . H A 11 . 



Mr. HOAR. I now call up the special order fixed for to-day. 
The SPEAKER. The resolutiou of the Senate will be read. 
The Clerk read as follows : 

Ix THK Senate of the Umted State.s, 

December 19, ld76. 
Resolved 61/ the Senate, {the Tfotue of Representatives corxcurring,) 1. That the 
vStatuca of John Wirithrop and Saumel Adams are accepted in tlio name of the 
United States, and that the thanks of Congress are given to the State of Massachu- 
setts for tliese memorials of two of hei' eminent citizens whose names are Ludissol- 
ubly associated witli the foundation of the liepublic. 

2. That a c«py of these resolutions, engrossed upon parchment and duh^ authen- 
ticated, be transmitted to the governor of the State of Massachusetts. 
Attest: 

GEO. C. GORHAM, 
By W. J. McDOXALD, 

Chief Olerk. 

Mr. HOAR. Mr. Speaker, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in 
obedience to the invitation of Congress, presents to the United States 
the statues of John Winthrop and Samuel Adams, to be placed in the 
old Hall of the House of Representatives, and to be kept reverently in 
that beautiful and stately Chamber so long as its columns shall en- 
dure. 

Different kinds of public service, various manifestations of intellect- 
ual and moral greatness, have been held by different nations and 
ages to constitute the chief title, to their regard. With all her wealth 
in other departments of glory, England chiefly values the men who 
have done good fighting in her great wars. Marlborough and Nelson 
and Wellington crown the stateliest columns in the siiuares and 
streets of her chief cities. When we would picture to ourselves the 
republics of Italy, four laureled heads of famous poets stand out upon 
the canvass. The statue of Erasmus, the great scholar of Holland, 
with a book in his hand, looks down upon the busy market-place of 
Rotterdam. The judgment of mankind has probably determined that 
through the great jurists of the days of the empire Rome has made 
her deepest impression on the world. The names of great soldiers, 
founders of nations, jurists, ministers of state, men of science, inven- 
tors, historians, poets, orators. i)hilanthropists, reformers, teachers, are 
found in turn on tlie columns by which the gratitude of nations seeks 
to give immortality to their benefactors. 

In deciding which of these clas.ses should be represented or who of 
her chihlren in each is worthiest of this honor, M:ussachusetts has not 
been driven to choose of her jtoverty. Is the choice to fall upon a 
soldier ? Sturdy Miles Standish, earliest of the famous captains of 
America — " in small room large heart inclosed " — Sir Williant Pepperell, 
the coi^queror of Louisburg, may vie with each other for the glory 
of standing by the ever youthful and majestic figure of Warren. 



AVould tlie reverence of tbe nation commemorate its fonnders? To 
the State made up of the hlended cohiiiies founded by Endicott and 
Winthrop and the men who, on board the Mayflower, signed the first 
written constitution that ever existed among men, more than one-third 
of the people of the United States to-day trace their lineage. 

No American state, no civilized nation, has contributed more illus- 
trious names to jurisprudence than Parsons and Mason and Story and 
Shaw. 

The long roll of her statesmen begins with those who laid the found- 
ation of the little colony- deep and strong enough for an empire. It 
will end when the love of liberty dies out from the soul of man. Brad- 
ford and Carver ; Endicott aud'Winthrop; Vane, the friend of Milton 
and counselor of Cromwell; Otis and Samuel Adams and Quincy and 
Hawley, the men who conducted on the side of thepeoplethat great de- 
bate by which the Revolution was accomplished before the first gun 
was fired ; John Adams and his son, whose biographies almost make up 
the history of the country for eighty years ; Pickering, who filled in 
turn every seat in the cabinet; Webster, the greatest teacher of con- 
stitutional law, save Marshall; Andrew, the great war governor; 
Sumner, the echoes of whose voice seem yet audible in the Senate 
Chamber, by no means make up the whole of the familiar catalogue. 

Science will not disdain to look for fitting representatives to the 
State of Bowditch and John Pickering and Wymau and Pierce, and 
which contains the birth-place of Franklin and the home and grave 
of Agassiz. 

Are we to hold with Franklin that the world owes more to great 
inventors than to all its warriors and statesmen ? The inventor of 
the cotton-gin, who doubled the value of every acre of cotton-pro- 
ducing land in the South ; the inventor of the telegraph, at whose 
funeral obsequies the sorrow of all nations throbbing simultaneously 
around the globe was manifested ; the discoverer of the uses of ether 
in surgery, who has disarmed sickness of half its pain aud death of 
half its terrors, may dispute with each other a palm for which there 
will be no other competitors. 

Among historians the names of Bancroft aud Sparks and Motley 
and Prescott and Palfrey and Parkman will endure till the deeds 
they celebrate are forgotten. "Worthy deeds," said John Milton, 
"are not often destitute of worthy relators, as by a certain fate 
great acts and great eloquence have commonly gone hand in hand.'' 

Is^ative to famous wits 
And hospitable, in her sweet recess, 

Massachusetts contributes to the list of poets who have delighted 
the world the names of Bryant and Emerson audWhittier and Long- 
fellow and Lowell and Holmes. 

Among the foremost of Americans in oratory, that foremost of arts, 
stand Quincy, the Cicero of the Revolution; Otis, that "flame of 
fire;" the persuasive Choate, the silver-tongued Everett, the majestic 
Webster. 

Of the great lovers of their race, whose pure fame is gained by 
unselfish devotion of their lives to lessening suffering or reforming 
vice, Massachusetts has furnished conspicuous examples. Among 
these great benefactors who have now gone to their reward, it is hai'd 
to determine the palm of excellence. To the labors of H(Mace Mann 
is due the excellence of the common schools in America, without which 
liberty must perish, despite of constitvition or statute. 

If an archangel should come down from heaven among men, I can- 



not conceive that ho oonld give utterance to a loftier virtue or clothe 
his niessagein more fitting phrase than are found in the pure elo(|uence 
in which Clianning arraigiuMl slavery, tiiat giant crime of all ages, 
l)efore the bar of pul)lic opinion, and held up tlie seUi.sh ambition of 
Napoleon to the condenniation of mankind. " Never l)efore," says 
the eulogist of Channing, " in the name of hunuinlty and freedom, 
was grand olVender arraigned l>y such a voice. The .sentence of degra- 
dation whi( h C'hanniiig li.is pjissed, conliii'ii-d by coming generations, 
will darken the fame of the warrior nunc than any defeat of his arms, 
or compelled abdication of his power." 

Dr. Howe, whoso youthful service in the war for the independence 
of Greece, recalling the stories of knight-errantry, has endeared his 
name to two hemispheres, is yet better known by what he has done for 
those iinfortunate classes of our fellow-men whom God has deprived 
of intellect or of .sense. He gave eyes to the lingers of the blind, he 
taught the deaf and dumb articulate .speech, waked the slumbering in- 
tellect in the darkened soul of the idiot, brought comfort, quiet, hope, 
courage, to the wretched cell of the insane. 

To each of these the people of Massachusetts have in their own way, 
paid their tribute of honor and reverence. The statue of Horace Mann 
stands by the portal of the State House. The muse of Whittier and 
Holmes, the lips of our most distinguished living orators, the genius 
of his gifted wife, have united in a worthy memorial of Howe. The 
stately eloquence of Sumner, in his great oration at Cambridge, has 
built a monument to Channing more enduring than marl)le or gran- 
ite, but Channing's published writings, eagerly read wherever the 
English language prevails, are better than any monument. 
. Yet I believe Channing and Howe and Mann, were they living, to- 
day, would themselves yield precedence to the constant and cour- 
ageous heroism of him who said, " I am in earnest ; I will not eciuivo- 
cate ; I will not retreat a single inch ; and 1 will be heard ; " whose fame 

Over his living head, like heaven, i.s bent 
An early and eternal mouumeut. 

The act of Congress limits the selection to deceased persons not ex- 
ceeding two in number for each State. Massachusetts has chosen 
those who while they seemed the fittest representatives of what is pe- 
culiar in her own character and history have impressed that charac- 
ter on important public events which have been benelits to the nation 
at large. 

That peculiarity is what is called Puritanism. To that principle, 
which I will try to define presently, I Ui[uk it would not be difficult 
to trace nearly everything which Massachusetts has been able to 
achieve in any department of excellence. But it has a direct national 
importance in three conspicuous eras. One of them is too recent to 
allow of dispassionate consideration. The others are the eras of the 
foundation of the State and of the American Revolution. 

Of the tinst, John Wiuthrop, twelve times governor of Massachu- 
setts, from 1030 to 1649, is the best type. Of the second she has se- 
lected Samuel Adams, sometimes called " the last of the Puritans," as 
the representative. 

"The true marshaling," says Lord Bacon, "of the degrees of sover- 
eign honor are these: In the tirst place are coiidiioirs imperiorum, 
founders of states and commonwealths, such as were Romulus, Cyrus, 
Ciesar, Ottoman, Ismael." Whatever rank shall bo assigned to our 
Commonwealth by history compared with the states of Romulus and 
Cyrus and the rest, the same "degree of sovereign honor" must be 



awarded to the iiiau ■who founded it as compared with those named 
by Lord Bacon. 

When yon look upon the statue of Jolin Winthrop you see the fore- 
most man of tliat little C()mi)any of EnglislMuen who abandoned 
wealth, comfort, rank, to found a Christian church and a republi- 
can State in the wilderness of New England. He was bt)rn in Suf- 
folk on the 12th day of January, 1587. He was a gentleman of good 
estate and descent, and of wide and powerful family connection. He 
was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, bred to the bar, and had 
a considerable practice as an attorney of the court of wards and liv- 
eries. A large portion of his private papers and letters to his family 
and friends have been preserved. I know of no other man of his time 
of whose mental and spiritual life from his childhood up we have such 
full particulars. He was a man industi'ious, modest, wise, brave, 
generous, affectionate, a lover of home, of kindred, and friends, toler- 
ant, religious, moderate, chaste, temperate, self-sacrificing. He had 
studied the laws of England, and thought deeply and clearly upon 
the principles of civil liberty. He was a member and communicant 
of the Church of England. From his early youth his letters to his 
family and near friends and numerous private manuscripts reveal 
his most secret religious meditations and aspirations. They breathe 
a sincere, liberal, catholic spirit of love to God and man, uttered in 
forms in which religious men of all denominations could unite. If 
these simple and eloquent utterances were found in a meditation of 
Pascal or A Kempis, in a confession of Saint Augustine, in a sermon 
of Jeremy Taylor, in a journal of John Wesley, or an essay of Chan- 
ning, I do not think that any disciple of either would deem them out 
of place. His style is simple and serious, rising sometimes to a grave 
and majestic eloquence. There are passages in his letters of exquisite 
beauty and "in the loftiest strain of religious faith and devotional 
fervor." There was probably no man in England with tastes less in- 
clined to the part of an adventurer, and with less personal ambition. 

Such, in the year 1629, at the age of forty-three, was this model En- 
glish gentleman, dwelling on his own landed estate, surrounded by 
affluence, engaged in honorable public employments, happy in home, 
friends, honor. Hehadheardof a rocky and ice-boundregion,the gloom 
of whose eternal forests was tenanted by savage beasts and men more 
savage. He had heard of a little comi)any of Englishmen, who had 
landed on that coast ten years before, at mid-winter, half of whom 
had perished before spring, " at one time only six or seven having 
strength enough left to nurse the djing and bury the dead," and who 
for ten years had maintained a precarious and doubtful struggle with 
famine and pestilence and the rigorous climate. But what should 
drive him, of all mankind, to leave the delights of rich and luxu- 
rious England, to abandon the pleasant vales of Sulfolk, for the rocks 
and sands of Massachusetts ? " Founders of states, such as were 
Komulus, Cyrus, Ctesar, Ottoman, Ismael." A founder of states 
such as these ivere not was John Winthrop. No legions flushed with 
foreign conquest demanded that he should lead them across the 
Rubicon to found an empire on the ruins of his country. No milk of 
the she- wolf mingling with the streams of his blood made him 
the lit founder of an asylum for a clan of banditti. No fanatical 
passion for conquest, no dream of sensual pai'adise, no restless no- 
madic habit, disturbed the even tenor of his life. But he was one of 
those men to whos*^ happiness civil and religious liberty were abso- 
lutely essential. The third Parliament of Charles I had just been 
dissolved. England was entering upon a period of ten years of abso- 



lute rnonarcLy, lier civil and military administration in tlic hands of 
Stratford, herVpiritnal atlairs in tlic hands of Laud. Winthro]) agreed 
in opinion with tlioso who were disposed to submit to neither. 

A charter had been earlier obtained. A few colonist-s had gone over 
to New England and established a government in subordination to 
the company in En^^land. On the 2Gth day of August, KJ'i'J, Winthrop 
and eleven others signed an agreement at Cambridge "to embark for 
the said plantation, to the end to pass the seas (under God's protec- 
tion) to inhabit and continue in New England; provided always, that 
the whole government, together with the ]iatent for the said planta- 
tion, be iirstbyanordorof court legally transferred and cstablisbedto 
remain with us and others which shall inhabit upon the said planta- 
tion." This condition was i>erformed. In October there.after the 
record of tiie comi)any recites " the court having received extraor- 
dinary great commendations of Mi-. John Winthrop, both for his in- 
tegritv and suthciency, as being one every way well fitted and aecora- 
jdishod for the place,'the said Mr. Winthroj) was with a general vote 
chosen to be governor for the ensuing year." 

It is more than probable that the accession of Winthrop to their 
society was the condition of the wlude emigration. It is more than 
Ijrobable that the coming over of Winthrop and his lleet of ships saved 
the whole Puritan settlement from being abandoned. It is certain 
that for the nineteen years for which he was chief director of the 
affairs of the colony he impressed upon it his own character and quali- 
ties» He took farewell of England '• in a tlood of tears." Ho begged 
his brethren of the English chnrch for their prayers, "which will he 
a most prosperous gale in our sails." To narrate his remaining life 
would be only to tell again the well-known tale of the history of 
Massachusetts for its first nineteen years. 

The qualities which the greatest rulers of free States have dis- 
jdayed iu the most dititicnlt times were all needed in the governor of 
the infant Commonwealth. No other American so nearly resembles 
Washington. " He was, indeed," says the old annalist, " a governor 
who had most exactly studied that hook, which, pretending to teach 
politics, did only contain three leaves, and but one Avord on each of 
those leaves, which word was ' moderation.' " Another Puritan writer 
calls him " that famous pattern of piety and justice." He was re- 
proved by the clergy of the colony for his " overmuch lenity," in the 
month Roger Williams was banished. He preserved unbroken his 
friendship with Williams, who wished him to he the governor of his 
own plantation in Rhode Island. He poured out his estate in charity, 
leaving hut £100 at his death. He'gave his last measure of meal to 
a poor woman, when the colony was starving, a ship laden with pro- 
visions from England arriving just in time for their safety. 

When impeached for an act of necessary authority, he took hisplace 
modestly and meekly at the bar of the court of Avhich he had been 
head, where he defended himself in a discourse defining the true na- 
ture of civil liberty which for grave and majestic eloqucmce has heeu 
pronounced by high authority " equal to anything of antiquity." 

The questions which divided the Roundhead from the Cavalier, the 
Puritan from the high churchman, are not yet at rest. Until they are, 
men wiU differ iu their estimate of the generation to which John 
Winthrop belonged and of the Commonwealth of which he was the 
chief founder. IJut the concurrent judgment of all lovers of America 
now accepts the estimate which has been eloquently expressed by his 
distinguished biographer and descendant, your accomplished i)rede- 
cessor iu that chair: " A great example of private virtue and public 



8 

usefulness; of motleration in counsel and energy in action; of stern 
self-denial and unsparing self-devotion : of child-like trust in God and 
implicit faith in the gospel of Christ, united with courage enough for 
conducting a colony across the ocean and wisdom enough for building 
up a state in the wilderness." 

When John Wintbrop died, in 1649, the colony of which he had been 
the foremost planter was firmly established as a Christian state. 
Thirty flourishing towns, in which every freeman had an equal vote, 
were represented in the Legislature. The college, the schools, the 
churches, agriculture, and trade and fisheries were prospering. The 
little Commonwealth did its full share to keep up the glory of the 
English flag at Louisburg, at Quebec, at Martinique, and the Havan- 
na, and many another well-fought field. But the people kept a wary 
lookout for any encroachment by King, Parliament, or governor on 
the natural and inalienable rights of Englishmen, as declared by their 
charter. In 1763 the great drama was fairly opened which ended 
with the separation from England and the adoption of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. The Legislature hesitated a good while 
whether Samuel Adams, or his illustrious kinsman, John Adams, 
should be chosen as the representative of the revolutionary age. I 
think tbe even-hanging balance was inclined at last by the thought 
of the ample compensations which life brought to the latter for Ms 
services and sacrifices in his country's cause. 

I can conceive of nothing which the human heart can desire in sat- 
isfaction of a pure ambition which did not fall to the lot of Johu 
Adams. As was well said by Mr. Webster, "he was attended through 
life by a great and fortunate genius. He had written his name where 
all nations should behold it, and where all time should not efface it." 
He lived to see the independence of his country achieved. His was 
the rare good fortune to take part in a great revolution from its be- 
ginning to its successful issue. The proscribed rebel was received by 
the sovereign who had hated him as the representative of a great and 
free people. He was deemed by his countrymen worthy to be asso- 
ciated with Washington in the inauguration of the Government, and 
succeeded him in the great office of the Presidency. He was the 
foremost champion of the Declaration of Independence on the floor 
of Congress, and his famous prophecy will cause his name to be re- 
membered by his countrymen as its anniversary returns until time 
shall be no more. He was the chief author of the constitution of his 
native State. He rejoiced in the congenial companionship of one of 
the most affectionate of wives and most intellectual of women. His 
life ended on the spot where it began, at the great age of ninety, in 
a strong, vigorous old age, made happy by private aftection and pub- 
lic reverence. By a coincidence almost miraculous, his death took 
place when millions of his countrymen, happy and at peace, under 
the Presidency of his son, were celebrating the great day he had made 
famous. "If the chariot and horses of fire had been vouchsafed to 
him, he could scarcely have had a more splendid translation or de- 
parted in a brighter blaze of glory." 

Samuel Adams, on the other hand, lived and died poor. His only 
son preceded him to the grave, leaving none to inherit his name. He 
held no coiisiderable public oflice, except that of delegate to the Con- 
tinental Congress, until he succeeded Hancock as governor in his 
seventy-second year, when in his own opinion the weight of years and 
infirmities was beginning to unfit him for further service. 

But for more than thirty years, beginning when most of the great 
actors in the Kevolution were unborn or were children, he was the 



unquestioned leader of the conteHt for lihcrfy in Miissiuliiisi-tts. I 
shall not repeat the familiar story. .Saiiniel Adams was, I think, the 
Kreatestof our American inil)Uc men in civil lifti ; greatest, if wejudge 
him by the soundness and sureness of his opinions on the threat (pies- 
tions of his time and (d'all tinu? ; j;reatest, as shown liy the strcn^^th 
of original arj^ument by which he jiersuaded the pt^ojiic to its f^ood ; 
greatest iu the imperial power of personal will by which he inspired 
and compelled and subdued the statesmen of his day who were his 
companions; greativst in the snblinie self-denial whicii contented it- 
self with accomplishing public results withoutseeking personal re- 
ward either of fame or otlice. 

" If there was any ralinnrus to the Revolution," said Thomas Jef- 
ferson, " Samuel Adams was that man." From the day when on tak- 
ing his degree at Harvard in 174:5 he maintained that it is lawful to 
resist the supreme magistrate if the coninumwealth cannot otherwise 
be preserved, down to the time when the Declaration severed the tie 
between England and the colonies, he conducted the great debate of 
liberty. In the achievement of great revolutions which mark and se- 
cure the progress of liberty, three kinds of leaders are alike indispen- 
sable: the philosopher, who establishes great principles; the states- 
man, who frames great measures, tills great executive offices, leads 
popular and legislative assemblies ; the politician, without whose 
marshaling of political forces civil contests must l»o carried on bj' 
mobs, and not by parties. Adams was all three. With clear logic he 
derived his great argument from its foundations in the immuuita- 
ble laws of ethics and the inalienable rights of human nature. With 
consummate wisdom, he directed all the measures of the Massachu- 
setts Assembly, never driven from his position or taking a false step. 
He was the most dextrous politician that ever planned an election or 
managed a caucus. He laid down the pen iu the midst of a profound 
treatise which Locke or Hooker might have envied to unngle with 
the workmen at the rope-walk or the crowd at the street corner to 
plan the conduct of the coming town-meeting. I know no second in- 
stance in history where these three characters have been so wonder- 
fully combined. Yet, what is more wonderful still, Adams was free 
from the faults which commonly beset each. A profound political 
philosopher, his feet always touched the ground. He was never led 
astray by his theory. A statesuum, he was without personal ambi- 
tion, A politician, he was without a wile. There is no more hurtful 
error than the notion of our doctrinaires that the function perfonned 
in free states by men who are termed politicians is not dignified, hon- 
orable, serviceable, and honest. When wars are brought to successful 
issue without planning the campaigns ; when battles are won without 
generals, disposition of forces, or discipline, good results will come 
to pass under popular governments without politicians. But wliether 
concerting his plans in the caucus or addressing the people in Faneuil 
Hall, which was called his " throne," the absolute truth and simple 
honesty of Samuel Adams were unstained. He would luit have de- 
ceived that people if thereby he could have redeemed a world from 
bondage. 

With unerring wisdom, earlier than any other person in his own 
State, he saw the principles on which the American cause was based, 
and the means by which public opinion should be convincd, combined, 
and made effective iu their support. He saw the power of the news- 
paper when it was almost unused as a political force. He was the au- 
thor of the most important state papers, the instructions of the town 
of Boston to its representatives, of the assembly to its agents in Eng- 



10 

land, its answers to the royal governors, wherein the natural rights of 
men, the chartered privileges of the people, and the limits of executive 
and legislative power were established ou foundations from which 
they have never been removed. It was said of him that he had the eyes 
of Argus and as many hands as Briareus, and in each hand a pen. 
His style was simple, severe, chaste, restrained, as became the great 
themes he had to discuss. But it conveyed his weighty meaning 
alike to the understanding of the people and the apprehensign of 
his antagonists. " Every dip of his pen," said Bernard, " stung'like a 
horned snake." 

He always put other men forward when'glory was to be gained or 
desirable public office to be filled — never when responsibility or peril 
was to be encountered. Behind the conspicuous presence of Hancock, 
the brilliant rhetoric of Otis, the British governors felt and dreaded the 
iron hand of Adams. With his own lips he gave the signal for the 
movement of the tea party. With his own hand he carried to the coun- 
cil the impeachment of Oliver. On the day of the Boston massacre 
Adams intrusted no other messenger with the demand for the removal* 
of the regiments. Yonder statue represents the great popular leader 
and chieftain, king of [men, the genius of American liberty speaking 
through his lips, as he stood in the presence of the royalty of England 
represented by Governor Hutchinson : " If yon have the power to re- 
move one regiment you have power to remove ;both. It is at your 
peril if you refuse ; night is approaching ; an immediate answer is ex- 
pected. Both regiments or none." " It was then," said Adams after- 
ward, "if fancy deceived me not, that I observed his knees to tremble. 
I thought I saw his face grow pale, and I enjoyed the sight." 

He was among the earliest of American advocates, I think in nearly 
every case the earliest, of doctrines which, when he first uttered 
I them, were deemed paradoxes or Utopian dreams, but to-day are the 
accepted maxims of constitutional liberty. Among these he main- 
tained that the right to life, liberty, and property are essential and 
inalienable rights of hiiman nature ; 

That Magna Charta is irrepealable by Parliament, (citing in sup- 
port of this view the ciu'se pronounced by the church in presence of 
King Henry III and the estates of the realm upon all who should 
make statutes or observe them contrary to it ;) 
• That representation of America in Parliament was impossible ; 
V That King or Parliament, together or separately, had no right to 
affect the liberties of the colonies ; 

That, therefore, Parliament had no power to legisFate for the colo- 
nies in any case ; 

That the union of the several powers of government in one person 
is dangerous to liberty ; 

That the Crown had no right to grant salaries to colonial judges or 
governors ; 

That kings and governors may be guilty of treason and rebellion, 
'and have in general been more guilty of them than their subjects ; 

That the welfare and safety of the people are paramount to all 
other law ; 

That governments are founded on equal rights ; 

That the people have natural right to change a bad constitution 
whenever it is in their power ; 

That American manufactures should be a constant theme 

He was never ■weary, 

Says his biographer — 
of 'promoting a widelj' diffused common-school system, ■whereby the poorest mi^ht 
educate his chihlren to a point wliere talent might win its way on equal terms with 



Jl 

tlioir more wealthy m-i;;lil>orH. This was (leinocrafic (loftriiie in its piirnnt form 
and, as Mr. Adam's conceived it, was tlie juiniiiile on which the Itcvolution had 
been accomplished. 

The instinct of Hntchiiif^on did not orr wli<'n it pronounced him / 
the iifst man in America wlio advocated independence. 

Tlie lirst public denial of the right of rarlianicnt to tax America, 
the tirst public oppo.sition to the stamp-act, the lirnt snggeHtion of a 
general union of the colonies, are in the instruction of the town of IJos- 
tou to its representatives, adoi)ted in 17(14 and drafted by Samuel 
Adams. This preceded by twelve months I'atrick Henry's resolution 
iu the Virginia House of "Burgesses of May, \'H>'>. In that life of in- 
cessant activity, constantly engaged in debate in the assembly, in con- 
troversy in the press, a writer of such originality that the doctrines 
must have seemed to the men of his day paradoxes, having to meet a 
powerful and nnscrupnh>n8 government by combining pojmlar forces, 
no instance can be found of his advancing a doctrine which is not to- 
day accepted, or of his proposing a measure from which he was com- 
pelled to recede. 

It has been charged that the " glittering generalities " of the Decla- 
ration of Independence were the result of the French tastes of Jeffer- 
son, and were acquiesced in— not believed in— by his associates in the 
Continental Congress to conciliate his supposed intiuence in Virginia. 
The criticism has been made by Mazzini, I think repeated by Bis- 
marck, that it asserts that the security of rights, not the performance 
of duties, is the object of the state. The statement and the criticism 
are unlike unfounded. Every sentiment of the Declaration can be 
found anticipated in the writings of Samuel Adams. It contains the 
matured opinions of the most religions race of men that ever lived at 
the most religious period of their history. The men who believed that 
"the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever " did not 
lightly put on record their creed as to the object of the state and the 
purpose for which governments are instituted among men. They knew 
that to add a political sanction to religions or moral duty, or to enlist 
the forces of the state for its performance is impossible without trench- 
ing upon that liberty of conscience, which they valued even more 
than their political rights. 

Burke, iu his famous delineation of the character of the colonists 
in his great speech on conciliation with America mentions as among 
the marvels of history the formation of voluntary government by the 
people when the ancient government of Massachusetts was abrogated 
by Great Britain. That voluntary government, obeyed, as Lord Dun- 
more said of that in Virginia, "infinitely better than the ancient ever 
was in its most fortunate periods," was largely the work of Samuel 
Adams. 

His respect for law and horror of lawless violence were remarka- 
ble in the leader of a revolution. When the mob attacked the house 
of Hutchinson he declared he would rather have lost his right hand. 
It was through his influence that Quincy and John Adams defended 
Captain Preston, and the soldiers who had fired on the people and se- 
cured their acquittal. He restrained the impatience of the people, 
waiting patiently for eight years till the time should come when his 
opponents should be put clearly in the wrong by first resorting to 
force. 

He had a marvelous personal magnetism which few men could re- 
sist, by which he attracted many brilliant and able men to the cause 
of his"^country. John Adams declares in his diary that " to my cer- 
tain knowledge from 17.'j8 to ITTfj, that is, for seventeen years, he made 



12 

it bis constant rule to watch the rise of every brilliant geiiins, to seek 
his acquaintance, to court his friendship, to cultivate his natural 
feelings in favor of his native country, to warn him against the hos- 
tile designs of Great Britain." He gives us a few names out of many 
thus brought to the cause of America, Hancock, Warren, and Quincy. 
To tliese names he might have added his own, as abundant passages 
in his diary bear witness. 

Samuel Adams seems to have been a man without a selfish personal 
desire. You cannot trace in him the slightest evidence of the passions 
that so commonly beset the path of men in public life. The love of 
fame, the love of money, the love of pleasure, the love of ease, the 
love of power, the love of office, were alike without influence on that \ 
heart in which the love of liberty burned with a perpetual flame, i 
The authorship of many of his ablest papers remained unknown till 
long after he died. The agents of the King more than once tried to 
tempt him with money or office. Most of his companions in the pub- 
lic service found means to gain competent fortunes b\^ their own in- 
dustry. Adams once declared that a guinea never glistened in his eyes. 
But for a small inheritance received late in life from his son, he must 
have been supported in his old age by charity and buried at the pub- 
lic charge. His only relaxation from his unrepaid public cares was 
in conversation, especially with little children, of whose society he 
was passionately fond, and sometimes in listening to or joining in 
sacred music, in which he especially delighted. 

The judgment of historians, the voice of the people, the praises of 
friends, the auger of enemies, bear concurrent witness to the great 
qualities of Samuel Adams. 

Bancroft calls him "the chief of the Revolution." He says "his 
vigorous, manly will resembled in its tenacity well-tempered steel 
w^hich may ply a little but will not break." 

Sir James Grahame says " Samuel Adams was one "of the most per- 
fect models of disinterested patriotism, and of republican genius and 
ch.aracter, that any age or country has produced." 

Jefferson called him " the Palinurus of the Eevolution." He de- 
clared " he was truly a great man, wise in counsel, fertile in his re- 
sources, immovable in his purposes, and had, I think, a greater share 
than any other member in advising and directing our measures in the 
northern war. I always considered him more than any other man 
the fountain of our important measures." 

Patrick Henry writes from Williamsburgh, when Virginia was about 
to frame her constitution, " Would to God you and your Samuel 
Adams were here." 

James Warren said he was " the man who had the greatest hand in 
the greatest revolution in the world." 

John Adams exhausts the language of eulogy in his praise : " He 
has the most thorough understanding of liberty and her resources in 
the temper and character of the people. He was born and tempered 
a wedge of steel." 

Stephen Sayre calls him " the Father of America." 

Josiah Quincy says " many in England esteem him the first poli- 
tician in the world." 

A distinguished clergyman of his time calls him "one of Plutarch's 
men." 

Hutchinson, the tory governor, calls him " the all in all," "the great 
incendiary leader of Boston." When the ministry wrote to Hutch- 
inson " Why has not Mr. Adams been taken oft" from his opposition by 
an office?" he reiilied, "Such is the obstinacy and inflexible disposi- 



13 

tion of the man tliat lio never wonUl bo ooneiliated liy any ollieo i>r 
j^ift whatever." When HntehinsDn went hack to Kn<ihui<l he was 
received to an aiulienei^ by Kin<i (Jeorge in his closet, where king and 
governor vied witli eaeli otiier in dennnciation of Sam. Adams. 

GaUoway, the rhiladelpliia tory, dechired in his examination before 
the House of Commons tliat "the lower ranks in Philadelphia were 
governed in a great degree by Mr. Adams." 

Gage, in June. 177."., exceptsfrom tlie general oflerof pardon '• Samuel 
Adams and .Iidiu Hancock, whose offenses are of too llagitious a na- 
ture to admit of any other consitleration than that of condign pun- 
ishment." ' 

And so, Mr. Speaker, it has come to pass that in the centennial year, 
Massachusetts brings the first and the last of her great Puritans to 
rei)resent her in the nation's gallery of heroes and jiatriots. Two hun- 
dred and forty-six years have gone by since John Wintlirop landed at 
Salem. It is a hundred years since Samuel Adams set his name at 
Philadelphia to the charter of that independence which it had been 
the great puri)ose of his life to accomplish. Their characters, public 
and private, have been the subject of an intense historic scrutiny, 
both hostile and friendly. But the State, not, we hope, having failed 
to learn whatever new lessons these centuries have brought, still 
adoi>ts them as the best she has to otfer. 

I do not use the word Puritan in a restricted sense. I do not mean 
the bigots or zealots who were the caricature of their generation. I 
do not discuss the place in history of the men of the English connnon- 
wealth. Whether the liypocritical butioon of Hudibras or the re- 
ligious enthusiast of Macaulay be the fit type of that generation of 
Englishmen before whom Europe trembled, we do not need to inquire. 
I use the word in a large sense, as comprehending the men who led 
the emigration, made up the bulk of the numbers, established the in- 
stitutions of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Plymonth, and adminis- 
tered their atl'airs asself-goveruiug republics in all but name for more 
than a century ami a half. 

Through the vast spaces of human history there have resounded 
but a few heroic strains. Unless the judgment of those writers who 
have best conceived and pictured heroism— Milton, Burke, Carlyle, 
Fi-onde— be at fault, among these there has been none loftier than the 
Puritanism of New England. The impress which a man makes upon 
mankind depends upon what he believes, what he loves, what are his 
qualitiesof intellect andof temper. Youmust considerallthesetoform 
a just estimate of the great generations with which we are dealing. 
The Puritan loved liberty, religious and civil ; he loved home and 
family and friends and co'untrj^- with a love never surpassed, and he 
loved* God. He did not love pleasure or luxiny or mirth. He dwelt 
with the delight of absolute certainty on the anticiiiation of a life be- 
yond the grave. His intellect was fit for exact ethical discussion, 
clear in seeing general truths, active, unresting, fond of inquiry and 
debate, but penetrated and restrained by a shrewd common sense. He 
saw with absolute clearness the true boundary which separates liberty 
and authority in the state. He had a genius for making constitu- 
tions and statutes. He had a tenacity of purpose, a lofty and inflex- 
ible courage, an unbending will, which never (juailed or flinched before 
human antagonist, or before exile, torture, or deaf h. The Puritan was 
a thorough gentleman, of dignified, noble, stately bearing, as becomes 
men who bear weighty responsibilities, deal with the greatest inter- 
ests, and meditate on the loftiest themes. Read John Winthrop's 
definition of civil liberty or his reasons for settling in New England, 



14 

and judge of the temper of those men, who, of free choice, made him 
twelve times their governor. 

The Puritan believed that the law of God is the rule of life for states 
as for men. He believed in the independence of the individual con- 
science and in self-government according to the precedents of En- 
glish liberty, because he believed that both were according to the will 
of God. "it is the glory of the British constitution," said Samuel 
Adams, " that it hath its foundation in the law of God." " The mag- 
istrate is the servant," said John Adams, " not of his own desires, not 
even of the people, but of his God." He derived the knowledge of that 
will from a literal interpretation of Scripture, which he thought fur- 
nished precepts or examples for every occasion. Yet it is wonderful how 
soon the common sense of the Puritan wrought out the principles of 
sound administration, and freed him from the errorsinto wbicli other 
men fell. He interpreted literally the divine conmiand, " Thou shalt 
not snffer a witch to live." Yet the witchcraft delusion, disgrace of 
all Christian nations, never reached Plymouth or Connecticut, and 
touched Massachusetts but lightly. In P^nglaud, from 1600 to IGt^O, 
40,000 persons were put to death as witches, and in Scotland nearly 
as many. On the continent of Europe the victims were numbered by 
hundreds of. thousands. In Massachusetts the number never reached 
a score. The little Swiss city of Geneva put to death five hundred per- 
sons for this crime in a single year. A child of nine years old was ex- 
ecuted for witchcraft in Huntingdon, England, in 1719. The laws 
against witchcraft remained in force in England till 173(5, and in Scot- 
land till 1738, fifty years after the time when, first of all mankind, 
Massachusetts repented of the delusion, the opinion of her whole peo- 
ple being uttered in the ever memorable confession of Sewall, the 
Puritan chief justice. They had sacrificed almost every thing else 
that man values to enjoy the worship of God after their own fashion. 
Yet they were among the first of mankind to establish complete re- 
ligious toleration. I have heard the Puritans of New England taunted 
for religious bigotry by the representatives of States who, as late as 
1741, put men to death for the crime of being Catholics. 

The Puritan believed in a future life, where just men were to enjoy 
immortality with those whom they had loved here ; and this belief 
was his comfort and support in all the sorrow and suffering which he 
encountered. But he believed also in the coming of God's kingdom 
here. He had a firm faith that the state he had builded was to con- 
tinue and grow, a community of men living together in the practice 
of virtue, in the worship of God, in the pursuit of truth. It has been 
said of each of two great Puritan leaders, " Hope shone like a fiery 
pillar in him when it had gone out in all others. His mind is firmly 
fixed on the future; his face is radiant with the sunrise he intently 
watches." 

Lastly, the Puritan believed in the law of righteous retribution in 
the affairs of nations. No departure from God's law of absolute jus- 
tice, of absolute honesty, of absolute righteousness, could escape, so it 
seemed to him, its certain and terrible punishment. The oppressor 
who deprived the poorest or weakest of mankind of the equal right 
with which God had endowed him, the promise-breaker, who juggled 
with public obligation, the man who gained power by violence or 
fraud, brought down, as he believed, the vengeance of God upon him- 
self and upon his children, and upon the nation which permitted him, 
to the third and fourth generation. 

Mr. Speaker, the State that the Puritan planted has opened her gates 
to men of other lineage and of other creed. It may be that in the 



15 

coming centuries bis descentlants are to yield to another race tlie do- 
minion of his beloved Now Kn^land and that only in gentler climes 
and on tbe abores of a more pacific sea men will delight to remember 
that their fathers were of the company of Winthrop or sat in council 
with Adams. But tbo title of the Puritan to remembrance will not 
depend upon locality. In that mightier national life, drawn from so 
manj'^ sources — of many, one ; of many States, one nation ; of many 
races, one people ; of many creeds, one faith — the elements he has c<m- 
tributed aroelements of perpetual power : his courage ; his constancy ; 
his belief in God ; his reverence for law ; his love of liberty ; his serene 
and lofty hope. [Applause.] 



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